NOW WE CAN TURN to Sri Vasudeva Sharan Agarwala, who started out as a quasi-historian but finished his mortal journey as a profound spiritualist, almost like a Virakta. Everything he touched, he turned into unalloyed gold.
His first magnum opus, India as Known to Panini is by itself a masterly study in exacting historical scholarship – to put it mildly.
One of his foremost disciples, the late Smt Kapila Vatsyayan has written a deeply moving and reverential tribute to her Guru. Here are some excerpts from it.
…many have spoken of his versatility, his wide range and his phenomenal intellectual growth. I can only speak of the gifts I received from him of vision, of discipline and of knowledge. The first impression he made was of a man with a fund of information and knowledge… I had occasion to watch him closely in Benaras when he showed the direction of research to his students. The few remarks made by Vasudevaji on the need to know one's country better before one travelled abroad, the dates and the enthusiasm of the many armed images of the Hindu-sculpture, all acquired new meaning now… City to city, village to village and temple to temple I travelled, exploring, imbibing and finding my roots. He was pre-occupied, far away. As a concession to your presence, he would ask you to pick up pen and paper and order you to begin taking dictation. I have been witness to his dictating in one session on Indian Art, on Vedas, Panini and words of the Janapada tradition to three different people. This phenomenal erudition, with an unmistakable mark of deep intellectual organisation was as bewildering as it was impressive. The seemingly unrelated subjects or fields he attacked at a given moment showed an inner cohesiveness…The joy of revelation accompanied every scholastic effort. The totality of the experience was the gift.
If this is the first-hand testimony of a direct disciple who was herself a scholar of a high standard, we get some glimpses of his vision and method in his own words.
Unlike the motley crowd of those who call themselves “Indologists” and “Hindu scholars” today, Sri Agarwala was not an armchair scholar. He followed the same exalted tradition as that of his seniors like Sukhthankar, Kane and others. His method of study and research included extensive travel and interaction with people of all social strata.
In one place, he records his debt of gratitude to the boatmen of Varanasi and Triveni Sangama who taught him new technical terms related to maritime and riverine navigation.
The bow is termed as galahi, matha and mukha. The decoration of the bow with animal heads is termed gilaasa by the boatmen of Varanasi. The word could be derived from grasa which in Sanskrit architectural terminology is synonymous with simhamukha. Many technical terms used by boatmen sailing in the rivers and seas could be usefully gathered. Maiku, a boatman plying his boat on the Triveni Sangam of Allahabad, informed me that at one time a thousand boats such as pataila, mahelia, dakela, ulaki, dogi, bajara, malhani, bhaulia, panasuiya, katar, bhadaria etc., plied on rivers. I am indebted to him for the following terms…
After this, Sri Agarwala gives a list of more than thirty such technical terms drawn from various languages. His approach and methods once again illustrate the same truth: scholarship divorced from life and a living culture and society is barren at best and misleading and dangerous at worst.
WE CAN ROUND OFF this essay series with another Himalayan scholar of history, Sri Anant Sadashiv Altekar. Throughout his distinguished career, Sri Altekar wore many hats – as a scholar of history, as a numismatist, archaeologist and cultural chronicler. His gamut of scholarship is astoundingly vast and varied.
To give just a sample, it was Altekar who wrote the first comprehensive history of the Rashtrakutas. He was also the first compiler of the full history of Benares in his short masterpiece, History of Benares: Past and Present. His other pathbreaking work, Education in Ancient India is a majestic volume on Indian education from the Vedic times up to 1200 CE – i.e., up to the establishment of the so-called Delhi Sultanate. The choice of the period is by itself very revealing. The work was published in 1934 and was immediately condemned by British historians and scholars. Understandably so.
Another masterpiece was The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization From Prehistoric Times to the Present Day (1938). This work was the first comprehensive, historical survey of the status of Hindu women throughout our history. In his dedication, this is what Sri Altekar writes: “Dedicated to the sacred and beloved memory of my mother, Saubhagyavati PARVATIBAI ALTEKAR, WHO WAS AN IDEAL HINDU SADHVI.” (Capitals in the original). This, I think sets the tone for the work. Even this book was widely condemned both by the colonial British and by the traditional Hindu scholars.
The glory of Sri Altekar rests on three main pillars.
The first is his immeasurable contribution in promoting and elevating the study of Numismatics. He inherited the Numismatic Society of India (founded in 1920) in 1947 from the British and became its first Chairman and took it to greater heights. In fact, the same Vasudeva Sharan Agarwala pays rich tribute to Altekar in this regard:
No single man had before him rendered such a meritorious and permanent service to the cause of Numismatic Society. He conceived the idea to a permanent home for the Society and raised money for it by his extreme resourcefulness.
Second, Altekar’s stupendous labours in Archaeology, especially in Bihar. It is nothing short of incredible to learn that Sri Altekar took up on-site or field Archaeology in his late forties with unmatched passion like a child that has discovered a new toy and can’t have enough of it.
It was Sri Altekar who first unearthed the archaeological remains of the ancient city of Vaishali and Sonepur situated on the banks of Gandaki. Thus, he singlehandedly gave a fresh direction in the researches related to the Mauryan Empire and the Buddhist Era. Dr. George Moraes, in his obituary to Sri Altekar, describes the impact of his Bihar excavations as follows:
Kumrahar and Vaishali were brought back to life from long neglect and Sonepur arose as a new star in the Indian archaeological firmament. The excavations which he conducted at Patna resulted in the discovery of some unique antiquities such as the square base of a round Mauryan pillar, the like of which had been so far unknown…
The numerous drawings, pictures and photographs of these Mauryan and Buddhist sites in Bihar (or ancient Magadha) that we see today in books and films and on the Internet are the results of Sri Altekar’s pioneering field work.
The third edifice of Sri Altekar’s fame is his original researches in the history of the Gupta Empire. It was Sri Altekar who for the first time in 1928, wrote the comprehensive history of Rama Gupta, the son of Samudra Gupta in an erudite academic paper.
This apart, his two works, Catalogue of the Gupta Gold Coins in the Bayana Hoard and Coins of the Gupta Empire are seminal contributions on the subject.
Of these, his efforts at discovering the Bayana Hoard of Gupta coins is the stuff of legends. Till date, the Bayana Hoard is the largest collection of coins to have ever been discovered in the history of Indian archaeology: 1821 coins of different sizes, shapes, styles, weights and varieties.
Bayana, a small village in Rajasthan about three hours eastwards of Jaipur, had once been a flourishing commercial city under the Gupta Empire. On March 23, 1946, some village boys were randomly digging the earth and accidently unearthed some coins.
When the news spread, Dr. Altekar immediately began investigating them. With tremendous patience and diligence, he worked nonstop for about six years and finally produced the Catalogue of the Gupta Gold Coins in the Bayana Hoard in 1954. Altekar concluded that the last time anybody had seen these coins was in 455 CE. That was the year they had been buried by a Gupta governor who had fled the place due to the onslaught of the Huna invasions.
Sri Altekar gave highly detailed and accurate descriptions of each coin in the catalogue in 450 beautifully illustrated photographic plates. The work is an emulatory specimen of meticulous research and rigorous and exact scholarship.
And on that rather incomplete note, we can conclude this essay series giving some highlights about the methods of study and research of the exemplars of Indian history.
I’ve scratched just the surface but I trust that it has whetted the appetite of our readers who wish to embark on either a career or a hobby of research into the history of Bharatavarsha.
|| Sarvam Shivam ||
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